


Dancing Through the Storm

by bluetutu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Ballerina, Ballet, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Natasha is a cutie, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Red Room (Marvel), Red Room trauma, Romance, Trauma, dance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetutu/pseuds/bluetutu
Summary: "Ballet has saved Natasha's life in hundreds of ways, big and small, and she thinks that maybe, in some strange way, it's saving Bucky's life too."Natasha Romanov has been dancing her whole life - sometimes it's the only thing between her and insanity. When she meets Bucky Barnes, the infamous Winter Soldier, she isn't expecting to connect with him over ballet. She definitely isn't expecting to become his informal teacher, or to find a dance partner and possibly something more...
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier/Black Widow
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	1. watching and learning

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first fic I've posted on this website, so be nice :)  
> This takes place after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, if Natasha hadn't run away and had instead hidden at Avengers Tower for a while with Bucky and Steve.

He’s been watching her for five days now. Natasha can feel his eyes on her every time they’re in a room together, and it’s unnerving. It’s the same way she looks at her targets - coldly, assessing their strengths and their weaknesses with every step they take. But she has finesse and stealth on her side, and Bucky has neither. He doesn’t try to be subtle. He just watches, face blank, eyes darting and haunted and alert.

Every time she goes to the ballet studio, he follows her like a dog, sitting outside and watching her through the window. She’s closed the curtains on him twice. The first time, he gave up and left. The second time, he punched a hole in the door. Not violently, not with any anger, with the same absent-mindedness of someone tying their shoes. Just something that needed to be done. And then he watched her through the hole in the door, and she didn’t care enough to stop dancing.

Actually, that’s not true. She does care. He reminds her painfully of the smaller girls in the Red Room, crowding around the tiny peephole into the studio to watch the older dancers. They dissected each movement with their big, round eyes, always trying to learn. Always trying to get ahead. Yes, there was admiration glittering in their faces, but mostly there was a cold focus, the kind that every Red Room girl grows up with.

She was one of those girls once.

On Bucky’s face, Nat sees a reflection of that focus. He is processing her movements shrewdly and intently, and it sends a strong enough stab of nostalgia through her that she lets him watch.

He is a broken man, more broken than most. More broken than her. Broken in a very similar way, but so far, unable to move past the horrors he’s lived through. She understands the feeling better than he knows - the dark weight that follows you wherever you go, never letting you forget the blood you’ve spilled, the kind of person you were. And if watching her plie and rond de jambe and rise to demi pointe again and again is providing any sort of benefit to him, or even a distraction, she will let him have it. Ballet has saved Natasha’s life in hundreds of ways, big and small, and she thinks that maybe, in some strange way, it’s saving Bucky’s life too.

Natasha doesn’t tease Bucky, or stare back at him, or get angry about his constant attention. She doesn’t even acknowledge that he’s there. But on the seventh day she gets to the studio early, opens the door wide, and sets up a chair. Just in case he wants to come in.

—

It’s been ten days, and they have a routine now. Natasha goes to the studio twice a day, and Bucky is always waiting for her, sitting patiently in his chair like an exceptionally well-behaved four-year-old. She finds herself performing for him, holding her extensions just a little longer, making her movements just a little more pronounced.

If he was watching her like a predator, like he wanted her, she wouldn’t hesitate to take him down. But he doesn’t watch her like a predator. He watches like he’s learning, like he’s compiling it all in his head, and it breaks her heart just a little.

—

On the twelfth day, she decides to try to talk to him. They’ve both settled into the silence, but Steve has been bugging her to help him acclimate, to connect. “Please, Nat,” he says, desperation in his tone. “He likes you. You…” He falters, looking down. It's a testament to his love for Bucky that he actually continues that sentence - she's not exactly open about her past. “You’ve both experienced... similar traumas. He admires you. Can you just try?”

And of course she agrees.

So when she opens the studio door that morning, she throws a quick, casual “hey” in his direction as she walks to the barre. He tilts his head at her but doesn’t speak. She’s not sure she’s heard his voice since he’s come to Avengers Tower. She’s not sure if he even talks anymore, but it’s worth a shot.

“You know,” she says lightly, bending over to pull on her ballet flats, “you could join me if you want. If you’re bored of watching.” She fusses with the elastic, not really expecting an answer.

“I’m not bored.”

At the sound of Bucky’s voice, she wants to snap her head up, but she forces herself to stand slowly instead. “Okay. That’s fine.” Putting both hands on the barre, she starts to warm up her feet.

But he speaks again, voice rusty and tentative. “What do I wear?”

—

That night, he shows up wearing exactly what she told him to - t-shirt, shorts, thick socks. Of course, they’re all black. He’s tied his hair back into a ridiculously tight ponytail. Natasha pictures him alone in his room, brushing his messy hair a million times in order to smooth it back like that, and she feels a rush of an emotion she doesn’t want to name.

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

He follows her to the barre. She stands facing him, speaking softly. She can see the tension in his body, and she doesn’t want to scare him away.

“Mirror my movements, okay? Put your left hand on the barre, like this.” He copies her.

“Good. We’re going to start with pliés. Put your heels together and your toes apart - “ she demonstrates - “and bend your legs, opening your knees out.” She does it and he copies, slightly awkwardly.

“Okay.” Her heart is beating fast - this is stressful. “So three plies, with the arm like this, and then point your foot out to the side…”

She walks him through a set of simple exercises. It’s been so long since she was a beginner that she can’t even remember what she used to practice, but she breaks apart the exercises into their simplest components, watching him to make sure he doesn’t get lost. He keeps up remarkably well. His eyes are half-closed in concentration, and his muscles shake sometimes, when he finds a muscle he’s never trained before. 

It’s strangely gratifying, seeing him fix what she tells him to fix. He’s pretty terrible - arms too high, pulling his shoulders back too far - but he’s trying, and he already has the precision that comes from being trained to fight.

From being trained in the Red Room.

She doesn’t bring that up, though. She doesn’t tell him or ask him anything that doesn’t have to do with ballet, and she knows that he’s grateful for it. He isn’t relaxed, and he still hasn’t said anything beyond “yes” when she asks him if he understands, but some of his muscles are less tense than they were when he came in. He isn’t standing like he’s poised for attack. He’s standing… like a ballet dancer.

After an hour, he looks exhausted. She can tell that his body isn’t used to moving this way. She can also tell that he is able and willing to push past that exhaustion. More training. It took Nat years to learn how to let herself breathe, how to remember that everything she does now is only for herself and no one will punish her for taking a break. He hasn’t learned that yet. He will push himself to the breaking point if she asks him to.

She doesn’t ask him to. Instead, she gives him a small smile. “I think we’re done for the day. At the end of class, we curtsy and bow. To say thank you - you thank me for being your teacher, and I thank you for being my student.” She gives him a little curtsy, and he bows, never taking his eyes off her.

He gathers his things and leaves. As he opens the door, he looks back at her. “Thank you,” he says quietly and evenly, “for being my teacher.” And then he’s gone.

Natasha turns away so he doesn’t see the huge smile that’s spread across her face. She does a grand allegro, flying across the floor, never quite catching her breath.


	2. “He’s Fragile”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat talks to Steve about dancing with Bucky and continues to teach Bucky ballet.

When Bucky doesn’t come to the studio the next morning, Natasha feels a twinge of disappointment - she’s grown used to his presence, and she’d enjoyed teaching someone. She heads down to the dining room, sweaty and exhausted, to grab breakfast, and when Bucky isn’t there either, she’s a little worried that she scared him away. Ballet isn’t for everyone, she reminds herself. It’s intense. And so are you. She checks the lounge - Steve is sprawled out on one of Tony’s thousand-dollar couches, surfing the channels on the huge TV screen. She likes seeing him so relaxed, and proceeds to take full advantage of it by sneaking up behind him and sticking her foot in his face.  
He yelps, and it’s such a funny sound that she laughs as she swings her legs over the back of the couch and plops down next to him. “Hey.”  
“Hi,” he says, taking his eyes off the TV to look at her. “What’s up? You hate the shows I watch.”  
“That’s because you watch annoying game shows and dramatic reality shows that make me want to steal one of Tony’s suits and fly straight into the sun.”  
He laughs.  
“Have you seen Bucky?” Nat plays with the hem of her shirt, passing off her question as a casual one. No, it is a casual question. She’s vaguely curious, nothing more.  
“Yeah.” Steve clicks through the channels. “He came in here a few minutes ago. Complained that he felt like an old man, that he didn’t even know he could be sore in that many places.”  
Nat snickers, which makes Steve turn towards her. “Natasha,” he says accusingly, “what did you do to that poor man?”  
She smiles evilly. “Technically, he did it to himself…”  
“Nat.”  
She raises her hands in the air. “He danced a little, that’s all! I told him he could dance with me if he wanted, and he did.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah.” She smirks. “It’s hard to resist my appeal. You boys are weak. When I’m wearing a leotard, you can’t say no.”  
It was a joke, but now Steve’s looking at her differently. “You aren’t… you didn’t… seduce him, did you?”  
“No, I did not seduce him.” She’s dripping sarcasm, but there’s a stab of hurt somewhere inside her. Steve has seen her use her beauty, her body, to manipulate people time and time again. That’s what she was trained to do, but it still hurts that he reduces her to that so quickly. “He wanted to dance, and I let him. I’m doing what you told me to do.”  
Steve still looks worried. “Okay. I believe you. Just… be careful with him, okay? Don’t - he’s fragile.”  
She looks at him, the mirth and sarcasm dying from her eyes. “I know he is.”

—

She’s not sure that he’ll come back that night, but he does, right on time. “Hey,” she says, giving him a quick smile. “Ready to dive in?”  
“Yes.” He hesitates, like he’s about to say something else, but closes his mouth and turns away, walking to the same place on the barre. Natasha gives him the same exercises as the day before. She sees a million things to correct when she looks at his body - some big, some small - but she forces herself to only fix the most important ones.  
Once, automatically, she reaches out to touch his arm, to adjust the angle, and he tenses up. It’s a small, barely-there movement, but she’s been trained to watch people, and so she sees the terror flash in his eyes, sees his lip curl back and his head tilt down in a subtly menacing movement. She pulls her hand back quickly and doesn’t try to touch him again.  
Beyond direct answers, he still doesn’t talk, so she fills the void with corrections and random observations, trying to be polite. She can’t decide which is more uncomfortable - the silence, or her attempts to fill it. This class goes much like the last, with his energy starting to fail about an hour in. With some satisfaction, she notes that he’s shaking, which means that he’s using new muscles in new ways.  
She decides to put him out of his misery after only a couple center exercises because the set of his jaw is starting to remind her, just a little, of the grim dedication of the Winter Soldier. His lethal training is echoed in all his movements, and she can’t deny that it doesn’t unnerve her… and it makes her wonder if she was the same way when she first joined SHIELD. If maybe she’s still like that - if there are certain things that you can’t go through without absorbing into each step you’ll ever take.  
But she’ll push those thoughts away, leave them for late-night musings. For now, she turns to Bucky and says brightly, “Are you ready to call it a night?”  
“I can keep going,” he says, trying to master his breathing.  
She looks at him. Sweat dripping into his eyes, ponytail getting loose, trembling legs. Suddenly, she feels deeply sad for him, but she doesn’t let her face change. Pity didn’t help her acclimate, and she doubts it will help him either. “I know you can,” she says softly. “But you don’t need to. Let’s rest tonight, and we can work more tomorrow. If you want.”  
“Okay.” He turns away, grabbing his water bottle and heading for the door. Right before he leaves, he turns around and bows. “Thank you,” he says, in barely more than a whisper.

—

The next morning, she puts off her morning rituals and heads straight downstairs, wearing one of Clint’s sweatshirts and hastily braiding her hair as she walks to the main dining room/ kitchen. She slows down to a casual stroll as she opens the door, like it’s not at all weird for her to break from the routine that she follows without fail. She wants to see Bucky though, and clearly he’s used to eating much earlier than she is.  
Sure enough, he’s sitting at the table with his hands wrapped around a coffee mug, and Steve is standing at the stove making pancakes. He’s wearing an apron, which is dorky and adorable. It’s even funnier when he turns around.  
“Oh, wow,” Nat smirks. “A little weird to see Captain America wearing his own merch, but I admire it. Self love, and all that.”  
“What?” Steve looks down at his apron, which features the same design as his shield. “Oh, yeah,” he says ruefully. “Tony bought it for me. It’s dumb, but actually useful.” He gestures down at it, where an impressive amount of flour has accumulated. “Plus, it gives Bucky something to mock me about.”  
“Yeah, because you’re generally so perfect and un-mockable, Mr. Walking Hair Gel Advertisment.”  
Steve points his spatula at her. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady, or no pancakes for you.”  
Nat waves him away. “Tempting, but it’s okay - I’m not eating yet. I actually just came down to ask Bucky a question.”  
At the sound of his name, Bucky’s eyes snap up. Nat leans against the counter. “I was wondering if you wanted to come to the studio in the morning, or if you want to just stick to dancing in the evenings.”  
“Evenings are fine.” He’s staring straight into his coffee mug, which is pretty much empty.  
“Okay, sounds good.” She pushes off the counter and heads for the door. “All right, I’m off to the studio then. See you boys later.” She mimes shooting at Steve’s back, looks at Bucky, and she swears the corners of his mouth twitch up into a smile. She turns away so he doesn’t see how big her smile has grown in response.


	3. partnering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat and Bucky continue dancing together and try partnering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to post this chapter... school has been crazy but I just finished my first semester and have a lot more free time now, so hopefully I’ll be able to update this fic more :)

Days pass. Bucky gets better, and Nat feels proud of him and also, if she’s honest, proud of herself. She wouldn’t have thought herself to be a good teacher, but clearly she’s not completely hopeless. And Bucky keeps coming back, every single night. That has to mean something.  
After a week of classes, he turns to her unexpectedly after a jump exercise.  
“Can we do that one again?” he asks quietly. “I wasn’t focusing on pointing my feet.”  
“Sure. Make sure not to curl your toes - your feet need to point starting at the very top all the way down,” Natasha says automatically before realizing that Bucky just, without prompting, spoke two entire sentences. She tries not to make a big deal of it, though, and just starts the song over.  
After that, he seems to get more comfortable. With her, with ballet. His slower movements - port de bras, adagio - start to gain a quality that Natasha would go so far as to call beautiful - languid and soft and, she has to admit, sexy. And the faster exercises - god, she’s jealous. He’s only been dancing for a month or so (although she’s pretty sure he received some training in Russia, just like her, but she’s not about to bring that up), but his jumps are so precise and sharp.  
She tries not to look at him too hard or for too long. Which is difficult, because teaching ballet is all about watching - picking your student apart, isolating all the variables to find what is right and what is wrong. But the longer she looks at him in his tight shirt, calf muscles flexing, sweat dripping down his neck, the faster her heart beats. She can’t help it.  
“Do you think,” she says one day, “that we could try partnering?” She’s been thinking about this a lot, but she frames it as a passing thought. There are three main reasons that she wants to partner with him, and only one of them is for Bucky’s benefit. She genuinely thinks he’d enjoy a new challenge, and partnering teaches the body to move in different ways. The other two are purely selfish. For one thing, she doesn’t often get the chance to dance with anyone else, and a male partner opens new doors - she wants to do partnered jumps, partnered turns. She wants to fly. She could teach him famous variations, and she’s doing most of the work anyway - he just has to hold her up.  
And for another… she’s motivated by the simple desire to have his body against hers. She remembers her conversation with Steve, his implication that he didn’t want her and Bucky to become romantically or sexually involved.  
Well, they aren’t. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want it.  
“Yes,” he says, after some thought. “But I’ve never done it before.”  
“That’s okay. You have the easier job,” she says, smiling. “You just have to support me while I dance. We’ll do a turn first.”  
She stands right in front of him, feeling his breath on her neck. She grabs his hand. “You put your right hand here -” she pulls his hand over to cup her ribs - “and your left hand here.” She demonstrates, and he tentatively places his metal hand on the small of her back, fingers facing out. It’s cold. She’s not sure why she’s surprised.  
They look at themselves in the mirror, his hands on her ribcage, her breath coming fast. “Okay, I’m going to try a turn. Your job is to stay where you are and move your hands to gently push me around. I’m only going to do one turn, so your job is easy. Just let go when you’re supposed to.”  
“When,” he says quietly in her ear, “am I supposed to let go?”  
Never, she thinks. Never. Let’s just stand here, bodies touching, your words in my ear.  
“You let go when I start to turn. But keep your hands close to my body, and when I face the front again, grab my waist to steady me.” She’s blushing. Hopefully he’ll just chalk it up to exertion.  
“Okay.”  
“Ready?” He nods, and she takes a deep breath.  
The first turn is terrible - he doesn’t let go, and she just kind of stays put. The second turn isn’t much better - he pulls her back towards him and she topples back into him, but straightens up as soon as possible. On the third turn, he lets go but doesn’t grab her to stop her after the first rotation, so she finishes it on her own. She feels like teasing him about it, but she’s not sure how he’d respond. So they just do it again, and again, and again.  
Bucky finally growls in frustration and steps back, bowing his head to hide the anger in his eyes. He clenches his fists, and Natasha immediately steps back. It’s not a conscious thought, more of an instinct, but she masters it quickly, trying to hide the fear in her eyes.  
“Sorry,” he says gruffly to the floor.  
“It’s okay.” She starts to move towards him, but then decides to go get a drink of water instead.  
His emotions scare her. She knows him now, knows him as someone other than the vicious KGB-made monster she knew him as before. Separate from her past and his. Living together, and dancing together, has made her see him as more of a person, but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten his violence. It’s not him, she reminds herself. The man dancing with you is not the same man that shot you, fought you, left you scarred. It’s not him.  
But she knows that they both have a darkness inside them, however hard they hide it with ballet and pancakes and sweat and humanity. They have both done horrible, horrible things, and that isn’t something you can just set aside.  
She turns to him. His hands are shaking, and it makes her want to cry, and she really doesn’t want to cry. “Let’s wrap up for the day. We can try again tomorrow.”


End file.
